Smart, fleet-footed and firing enough enthusiastic F-bombs to feel true-to-life, Beau Willimon's 2008 behind-the-scenes look at wheeling and dealing on a presidential campaign is savvy enough to understand what audiences want to see. The maneuvering and double-dealing. The battle stories shared over drinks and loosened neckties. Sex with an underage intern.

Unlike the politics of actually running the country, which has felt like an elaborate game of chicken of late, campaigns for political office exist in a universe all their own — a monthslong fog of junk food, late nights and paranoid, giddy camaraderie fueled by notions of power and influence. There's a tradition of plays and films in this vein, both fiction and non, and they never get old: Gore Vidal's "The Best Man," "The War Room," "Primary Colors."

Willimon steals a little from all of them. But don't be scared off by the clunky title ("Farragut North" refers to the Metro stop in a section of Washington where former campaign workers set up shop as lobbyists — a retirement home for has-beens, in the metaphoric poetry of the play.) Frankly, the title of the play's soon-to-be-released movie adaptation from George Clooney, called "The Ides of March," isn't much of an improvement.

Stage Left Theatre had the foresight to stage the play just as the film is about to hit the radar, and it's worth seeing this exceptionally watchable, cleverly designed production just for comparison's sake. Nothing is what it seems here, a world where the lingua franca is made up of hoary lines such as, "The question you gotta ask yourself is whether you want friends, or whether you want to work for the president."

Kicking off the fall season with a highly commercial property that should sell plenty of tickets, director Vance Smith has assembled a cast that shows just enough restraint to underplay key moments while allowing for scenery chewing when needed. This is, after all, a political campaign — if the histrionics were missing, something would be wrong.

Here is a key difference to watch for: In the film, Clooney stars as a governor running for the Democratic nomination in Iowa; in the play, the candidate remains offstage the entire time. Based on his experience working as a campaign insider for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential bid, Willimon pins the story on a 25-year-old wunderkind press guru brought down by a strategic misstep.

Because the play so conspicuously avoids talk of any ideological issues (it was written prior to the tea party phenomenon), I suspect it will appeal to audiences regardless of political affiliation.

Ryan Gosling plays the young spinmeister in the film; Stage Left's production features Brian Plocharczyk in the role, and he is a dead-ringer for Bradley Cooper, both in looks and acting strengths and limitations. Plocharczyk has just two sweet spots here — he can play the hell out of cocksure moments, as well as the guy's intensely rattled transformation — but there's very little in between.

To some extent, that's a flaw of the piece. There is a distinct lack of piercing insight, and the stakes never quite feel as high as they should, which keeps the play in the good-but-not-great column.

Still, that's better than most theatrical endeavors could hope to achieve — this is fun ride, plain and simple — and Smith has pulled together a slick little production working with set designer Roger Wykes, who has created a deceptively simple environment with pinstripe wallpaper that evokes everything from a generic hotel room to an airport lobby. And this is quite a solid cast, with Sandy Elias as a wise, even-keeled political operative, Sarah Denison as a hungry New York Times reporter, plus some unforgettable and nuanced work from Melanie Derleth as the head-turning intern. The way she deploys a bit of post-coital pillow talk on Plocharczyk's character, gradually wrapping him tightly around her little finger, is a brilliant piece of acting.